The Fundamental Theorem of Samantha Carter
by Nynaeve506
Summary: Samantha Carter knew precisely what she wanted. And then she didn't. S.8 Full Alert through Threads with references to Gemini. (Re-post; original post 9/13/11). Canon-friendly.


_A/N: This was posted originally 9/13/2011 on AO3. I left here for a bit, but after some encouraging, I'm posting this one back here again. This one is a little bit more mature than my other fic here on so bear that in mind, but this is probably one of my favorite pieces. Written for CF for the Help the South auction several years ago. Thanks to Pol who originally beta'd this. All mistakes here on in, are mine. Read, review, but as always dear reader, enjoy._

She exchanges her digital clock for one with hands and numbers. Pete looks at it as he lies on his back, his blood cooling from their hurried, intimate greeting. They've gone a month this time and as skilled as she is at touching herself, it pales in comparison to good, old fashioned fucking.

"So how do you know what time it is if it's dark?" he wonders aloud.

How does she explain that the red numbers of her former time keeper remind her of moments she wishes she could forget? She doesn't know how to tell him about her insomnia and how the silence is unnerving. The steady tick of the clock is decidedly Earth. Decidedly _human_. She'll never admit that sometimes she has nightmares that her coffeemaker is made of replicator blocks; he doesn't know _they_ exist and she can't be the one to tell him.

It also means she can't tell him that the clock is something her evil twin doesn't know about.

Sometimes Sam thinks she might tell Pete some of it, national security be damned. He watches her when they eat, when the conversation seems to fall flat on the floor like a dead fish. He knows why and it's stamped with a large "Top Top Secret Upon Pain of Death". Despite his initial behavior he is careful not to push too much and she can see that he worries that he's not pushing enough. She throws herself into the sex. It's an apology and an explanation wrapped up into one very fuckable Samantha Carter.

It usually gets easier by day two or three. That's why she sure marrying him will be okay because he'll be there for a lifetime and she'll have enough days to string together, to eventually tell him, in vague terms, about the clock and the coffeemaker...and her toaster...and why she begins to panic when _The Terminator_ comes on. She curls up to him and tries to pretend her voice isn't trembling as she suggests they go to Puerto Vallarta for their honeymoon. Pete hears the fear in her voice, but respects her dignity as he turns off the TV and opens his laptop. They weigh the value of the resorts until she falls asleep under the glow of pixelated white, sandy beaches.

When he's not with her, she stays at the base working till all hours of the night. She used to have hobbies like working on her motorcycle, but that was before she met robots who could use a few lessons from Isaac Asimov. Even so, when she pretends she's lost track of time and it's oh-one hundred hours, her commanding officer shows up and stands in the door jamb.

"You should get some rest," Jack hints with a tone that implies an order.

"What time is it?" She prefers to feign ignorance because it's easier than admitting she doesn't want to go home.

He shoves his hands in his pockets and Sam's about to breathe a sigh of relief when he pauses. "A good box fan is helpful." Then he wanders off and leaves her there to stare at the piece of technology that she hasn't been working on.

The next day she picks up a fan at Wal-Mart. It's rudimentary and when it's on the whir drowns out even the mind-numbing ticking of her new clock. Sam sleeps like the dead and for the first time in years she is grateful that she set her cell phone alarm.

Pete sees the fan when he drops off his bag in the bedroom. "It's forty degrees outside," he points out as he mulls over the meaning of its presence.

He doesn't complain when she turns it on before sex. The fan gives her the freedom to close her eyes while she straddles him and she envisions the sound silencing her demons. She's disconcerted when an image of her general, naked underneath her, invades her orgasm. Collapsing on her lover's chest she strains to hear his heartbeat above the steady oscillations.

Pete mentions something about appointments to her, later, as she drifts towards slumber. His voice is soothing against the hypnotic hum. "Florists. Caterers. Et cetera...et cetera..."

"Sounds good," she murmurs and she nods off.

Her request for time off is sitting on her lab desk when the Russians raise their alert level. Planning a wedding is a bitch when the world keeps getting itself into shit storm after shit storm. The Trust is just another addition to the list of "Things Pete Can't Know". Once the crisis passes, she manages to take the nearly forgotten form up to Jack.

"Set a date yet?" he inquires as he peruses her paperwork. There's really not much to it, but him pretending to read keeps the awkwardness to a minimum. Sam shoves back the voice that tells her that there _shouldn't_ be weird vibes. _Maybe it wouldn't be weird if he wasn't part of your regular fantasy line up_, her inner self retorts and she holds in a cringe at the accusation.

"Trying. Maybe. It's difficult, what with the world constantly on the brink of disaster," she answers.

He signs off on it. "Yeah, well. I hear flights to Vegas are cheap."

Eloping was her first choice. Except that her replicator clone would expect that. So when Pete had suggested it, she'd shot him down. This is what she _wants_, she silently scolds. A dress and shoes and her father to walk her down the aisle even though she walked down that proverbial aisle when she was eighteen.

It was a ritual that a bastard clone couldn't fathom.

That night she doesn't climax when Pete dips his tongue between her legs. She has to omit so much truth that she refuses to fake her orgasm. He slides up and caresses her neck with his lips.

"What do you want me to do?" he offers.

"I'm not going to be able to tonight," she confesses. It kills her that he doesn't take it as a slight against his masculinity and that he willingly accepts her gift when she spreads her legs. She's grateful that he's quick about it and afterward he strokes her hair while she says nothing. She's beaten him down with her evasive maneuvers.

In the end she reschedules her leave three times. A dress fitting is squeezed in somewhere and frankly, it all runs together. She's glad she decided on a simple sleeveless tea length dress rather than wearing the lace-laden monstrosity that had been her mother's. Besides, her father knows she's no blushing virginal bride and she's well past the age in which she would try to pretend otherwise. These are the moments of rationale that scream in her ear. A flight to Vegas wouldn't be so bad...

Except the replicators are attacking. Again.

Except Daniel is gone. Again.

"Do you really want me to give you away?" Jacob comments with incredulity as she meanders with him through the corridors of the SGC. There's a briefing soon, so they have a few minutes to catch up before the impending doom becomes more...impending.

"You're not giving me away. You're walking me down the aisle," she corrects. It's an important distinction full of nuances and barely there lines upon which she balances. Sam acknowledges a staff sergeant walking by. "It's important to me, okay? I don't have much that's normal in my life."

Her father 'hrmphs' and doesn't say more on the matter. She thinks he looks paler than usual, but shrugs it off as too many hours in subterranean tunnels. She's overly preoccupied with the glaring reality that Daniel was kidnapped because of her and her knowledge. Excusing herself from her father's presence she ducks into her lab and in a fit of irrational reasoning, dials Pete's number. His voicemail picks up.

"Tiger lilies. I want tiger lilies," she says and hangs up without even bothering to tell him that she loves him or that she'll see him soon. There's not enough time to love him, not when the entire universe is going to be overrun by hellish little bugs that take on the appearance of her toaster and coffeemaker and her digital clock. She made the mess and she has to clean it up. Jacob taught her that. He once threw out a dozen or so Legos because she didn't put them away when he told her to. This time her Legos are alive and scattered across the floor of the galaxy.

Jack declares her innocent, but she's not. She sees the guilt in his own eyes and she wants to snap that if she's not at fault then neither is he. They know, though. Their self-recrimination isn't the kind that brings them to their knees as they wallow. It's a fact, a statement of truth that justifies the risks they take with their lives.

With that miniscule amount of courage, a few false starts, and a little help from Daniel (she's sure it _has_ to be him) the world doesn't end. She saves the world from herself - the demonic Lego version anyway. Maybe now she can pick china patterns without Armageddon on her back.

"You did good," Jack tells her as she sits in the commissary eating Jell-O.

"Thank you sir," she answers with a smile, a genuine one because she's got blue Jell-O and because there are defunct replicator squares under her boots.

He regards her for a second.

She puts down her spoon. "It wasn't your fault."

"Blame is pointless," he declares with a toss of his hand. "Daniel will make it back; he's got a unique talent for this sort of thing."

"Dying?"

"And resurrection," he adds with an upward point of his finger. "Give him a chance."

"I will."

There was a time when they would have bantered flirtatiously and sometimes she thinks that's what he hangs around for, waiting for her to indicate that they're okay. In these moments, when her guard is worn down low enough and her body can't take one more beating, she'll acknowledge to herself that Jack is always her first choice. His brown eyes are clouded with self-protection and it cuts her deeper than listening to him confess that she meant more to him than his life.

"Good night, Carter."

She watches him leave. The Jell-O doesn't taste quite as good anymore and the blocks are giving her the creeps. Discarding her half eaten dessert, she makes haste towards home and her shower. She relishes the hot water and the lavender soap. She says a prayer to the same God who holds her mother's hand that Daniel is all right. The exhaustion keeps her from being able to cry.

The next morning she has breakfast with her father and he barely eats.

"When do I get to meet him?"

"Who?" she says and then blinks. "Oh. Pete. He'll be in town this weekend."

"It's okay if you want to elope. You don't have to have a wedding on account of me," Jacob offers. It's a way out because he's picking up on her lack of excitement over her upcoming nuptials.

She lets out a heavy sigh. "I _want_ a wedding. Unfortunately, there are six billion plus reasons why my job tends to get priority. Why do you keep trying to talk me out of this?"

The accusation sets Jacob on edge. "You have a tendency to..."

"To what?" The fire in her tone is the same one she's had since was five-years-old and her parents told her she couldn't cover her room in glow-in-the-dark planets (they were renting and they didn't want to damage the walls).

"To do what _you_ think other people want from you," he finishes with a slight grimace

She considers his words, biting back a snarky quip that would do nothing but create mutual frustration. Quietly she assures him, "I'm doing this precisely because no one expects me to. I'm the practical one, remember?"

He shrugs and she's relieved though his suggestion haunts her well into her phone call with Pete that night. Sam holds back that her father is in town and tells him instead that she has a surprise. The omission buys her time to plan.

It's a glaring error on her part when Pete stumbles through meeting her dad. He's not the most graceful of men on his feet and he doesn't have to be. He's a cop and when push comes to shove, hand him a gun and he won't miss his target. There's not a lot of finesse required when reading someone their Miranda rights so she works to put aside the disapproving expression on her father's face.

She's past the age where her father can tell her who to date, much less marry. And Pete fits her. Really. She's still working to believe that right up to the point where he shows her _the _house. The house with a yard for a dog that requires more than she can give. The house she talks about when she can't sleep. The one he _bought_ without saying anything because he wants to see her face light up in a way it hasn't since...

It's how she knows she can't promise him forever. She couldn't tell him about the coffeemaker and she couldn't tell him about the maniacal mechanical beings sticking hands into her head. Instead she's spent countless nights telling him about _the house_. Sam has memories of her mother sitting with graph paper and a pencil designing the home she would one day build when Jacob retired. Some people did crosswords, her mother fiddled with blueprints.

When she died, Sam tucked the pages in a Bible that was embossed with _Angela Rice Carter _on the front. The yellowed pages were probably still there in a box at the bottom of her closet. It's a sick realization in the pit of her stomach. This is her mother's house.

She's perfected the art of the cheerful facade and there's no questioning from her fiancé when she asks to leave. Top secret lies are simple excuses that he can't verify and he just assumes she's headed to the SGC when she climbs into her own vehicle.

Her car guides her to the street _he_ lives on and the house _he _lives in and she sits there mentally crunching Samantha Carter times Jack O'Neill divided by Pete Shanahan. She's stared down the Goa'uld; terror is a familiar and oddly comforting emotion. She gets out of the car because it's time she completed the equation she's left sitting on her mental chalkboard.

"Carter?" he addresses with meat dangling from the end of a grilling utensil.

She's stuck on derivatives and imaginary numbers when from behind her the door creaks.

"Colonel Carter!" exclaims Kerry, the variable she didn't account for.

The drive from utter humiliation to the deathbed of Jacob Carter is a blur.

She doesn't leave the SGC. She doesn't call Pete. She doesn't even eat. This is her vigil, her father's life disappearing and ticking away. Inside she's clawing at the edge of the cliff she's trapped on. She's not a woman, she's a child. She's four and she needs her daddy to make the monsters go away.

"I guess I won't get to give you...I'm sorry, 'walk you down the aisle'," Jacob manages between labored breaths.

"Maybe I'll elope," she concedes because now more than ever, the wedding seems like one of the dumber ideas she's had in a while.

They sit together and she watches the Tok'Ra honor Selmak. She sneaks away to give them privacy and she climbs up to the observation room. How rich could friendships be to last hundreds of years? Could she love the same man for centuries? Trying to envision centuries is impossible, she can't even fathom ten years. Flux she comprehends, it's the constant she puzzles over. Sam hardly notices Jack enter the room, but she is keenly aware of how warm he is when his arm slides around her.

His hand against her cheek is reassurance that the world will continue. It's last thing she won't tell Pete as she folds the ring into his hand and says goodbye. Double lives and half-truths aren't the foundation for happiness.

She breaks her engagement and then is forced to wait for a death that never comes.

Daniel's been back less than 24 hours when Sam wanders into Jack's office. She's there for a million reasons, but only one makes it to the tip of her tongue when he asks her if she still needs the week leave she put in.

"Yes, sir," she tells him and she shuts the door behind her. "I could use a break."

"I think you'll need more than a week," he replies neutrally as he files the paper in a stack that's haphazardly arranged. "And you have time because of..."

Jacob. Her brother will arrive in a few days and there are deposits and finances to sort out with funerals and dead weddings. She doesn't care. Not at that moment. Not when the world had been ready to end and then it didn't. It stings like hell that her father is gone, but in his death he bequeathed to her his strength. Sam refuses to dishonor the gift.

"Actually..." she bites the inside of her lip because she's taking a leap that could kill her. "I wanted to go fishing."

The subtle way his brow _almost_ shoots up and the manner in which he leans back, cautiously, in his chair let's her know she's hit pay dirt even if nothing is a guarantee at this point. "I know a secluded cabin up in Minnesota..."

He hasn't tested these waters in a while and she enjoys the tingling that starts in her belly and ends at her toes.

"It sounds perfect."

The phone ringing interrupts whatever else the half-forbidden conversation would have said and she gives him her biggest smile as she slips out the door into the corridor. Technically she should be headed home to deal with the nuclear explosion of a life that she tried to want. Instead she heads to her lab where she tinkers. Sam knows he'll come and she knows the sound of his gait before he rounds the corner.

"Hungry?"

"Starving."

They walk side by side, not touching as usual until they get into the elevator. His fingers idly brush against hers and the backs of their hands purposefully remain in contact. The sensation is simultaneously illicit and delicious and it's mixed with a playfulness that's uniquely them.

At dinner, he tells her about paperwork and Walter's uncanny ability to know precisely what he needs when he needs it. She tells him about the scientists and the science and she catches him in his pretend ignorance when he laughs at a joke he shouldn't have gotten. He pays the tab and she doesn't insist otherwise. Everything stays professional up until he takes her home. Her house sits there, the one she rents. She probably should have bought, but she hadn't anticipated eight years in the same town.

"You want to come in?"

He gets out of the truck without protest and follows her without speaking. She can feel him, his body heat radiating in her direction, and they both know they're done with games. The seconds and minutes that separate them from the inevitable are dragged out over polite offers of coffee and the suggestion of movies on television. He declines.

She kisses him. Hesitantly at first and then with more confidence.

Her fingers are in his hair, threaded in silver and his hands are slipping beneath her black tee beginning the tailspin. It's not that the regulations don't mean a damn, they remain steadfastly in place and she refuses to justify her actions. She'll transfer tomorrow if it means she can have him right then and there. This time it's the rules that can conform; she's done waiting for someday.

They've never been soft people and neither of them is interested in sweet foreplay and slow sex. Her teeth grab his lower lip and her nails dig into his skin and perfect Jack O'Neill knows what she wants without her having to say it, like he can read her damn mind. It's what she hasn't been allowed to know, that he's spent years learning her and at some point it turned into loving her.

Oh.

Her back against the wall, her shirt missing in action, a dizzying twirl into the bedroom, and she's got him between her thighs. Her gasps and his grunts are peppered with a rhythmic tick-tick in the background. The fan is covered by BDU pants, ignored amid sultry moans. He holds her hips to steady himself and she throws back her head.

Swathes of radiant light dance around her when he's in her and she loves that he's muttering profanities as she hikes her legs up his back. Hypnotized by pleasure, he pins her wrists above her head.

"Carter," he hisses as she rolls and arches and she thinks she might never be able to hear him say her name again without instantly spreading her legs.

She can't say if it's the best sex of her life or if he's the largest she's ever seen. The important fact is that she feels complete because she feels _real_, because she feels _raw_, and because she feels _open._ She's not a superhero. She's not an angel. She's a soldier who forgets and who gets lost and who trembles in fear when her life hangs on a thread. She might even be one turn off from freaking insane.

When it's over, he's got his face buried in her neck and he's panting while he keeps his fingers tangled with hers so tightly that she's losing circulation. He needs this like she needs this and it makes them equal despite the disparity in rank. They have to talk eventually and deal with the consequences of falling into bed together. She has no worries or concerns. They can't go back even if the thought had occurred to either of them.

He settles to her side and they doze off entwined until they wake up with the first light of day. She doesn't think twice when she figures out that the pants on the fan belong to her.

"I'll retire," he says as he drinks coffee at her table wearing nothing save his boxers.

"I could retire too," she teases with a sly smirk behind her mug. Her eyes glitter in the morning sun. "We could buy a house with no one around for miles and have loud sex on our porch."

He gives her a lascivious rake of his eyes. "I have a cabin in Minnesota where we can do the same thing."

Their problem doesn't get solved with breakfast and they don't bother driving separate cars to the base when Daniel calls with "big news". He gives them a tape which feels like a brain-teaser tailor made for her and she has to concede that a brand new ZPM really is rather significant. Jack's hand on her ass causes her to jump and she can't believe he did _that_ in front of _them_. Not that she's ashamed, although she has mixed feelings about finding out the trip to Minnesota isn't exclusive. She loves Daniel and Teal'c, but her relationship with Jack continues to be an unsolved equation.

"So. The guys, huh?" she lamely segues when they're parked in her car, studying her house like it's a Goa'uld mothership. Despite their amorous evening, she can't cease being Lieutenant Colonel Carter and there are alarm klaxons going off like crazy.

"Did you want to hide this?" he responds and she's surprised.

"No. I thought...how are we going to have wild outdoor sex?" she blurts, an unexpected grin tugging at the corner of her mouth and she can _feel_ him smiling even if she's not looking at him.

"Outdoor sex is overrated. Twigs in the unmentionable parts. Chafes like hell and the mosquitoes...you can only use Benadryl sticks in so many places."

The tension finally breaks and Sam giggles and then she snorts and then she's outright laughing and he's chuckling along with her. He wants her to feel better and he knows that an intense week with nothing but his witty repartee would be too much on the heels of her father's death, her broken engagement, and _two_ nearly-ends-of-the-world. He wants to give her an out if she finds out she can't handle him farting in bed.

The guffaws peter out and Jack places a hand on her arm and meets her eyes with an intensity that makes her heart stop and her world spin. "We'll get a two day head start," he informs her, then his phone rings.

She sleeps alone that night, but she sleeps soundly enough with the fan and her dreams and the lingering aroma of Jack O'Neill. The memory of their stolen night is her anchor as over the next few days she is slapped repeatedly with the reality of the choices of Jacob and herself. Sam picks up her father's ashes after she sends a check to Pete for the deposits he lost. He didn't ask for her to do it; it's her sense of responsibility that demands it.

Mark comes alone because it's a short trip and he's got two kids plus a pregnant wife.

"Pete's a good guy," she reassures him as she makes up the guest room with fresh sheets and clean towels.

"I'm okay with it, Sam," he promises. "You just sounded so lonely."

"I was, but I'm not anymore."

He's seems at peace with her answer, they aren't kids fighting over Saturday morning cartoons after all. They've both seen enough and done enough that there's no need to justify their actions. If Mark senses the chemistry between her and Jack, he doesn't react. Teal'c picks up on it though at the post-funeral gathering and he gets a knowing gleam in his emotive eyes. She's not sure if she should be pleased or disturbed that he understands why Jack volunteers to stay to clean up.

Later on, after she's taken Mark to the airport, when the streetlamps are on and the neighborhood is settled for the night, Jack sits with her on the front step with a beer. They still haven't figured it out, the being together without completely telling the regs to go to Netu. She's okay though because the world owes her. She would have gladly died any number of times if it saved six billion souls. That's what it means to be an officer.

Quietly she leans against Jack's shoulder, her own beer abandoned next to her. He's talking about Minnesota, about the skies and the trees and the lakes. He's normally a man of few words, so she's loathe to disrupt his narration. She listens as her burdens fade with each star that appears overhead.

"Fishing, Carter. It's really all about the fishing."


End file.
